1857: Photos of the World From the Year The Atlantic Launched

160 years ago, the world was in a state of transition. The Industrial Revolution had laid the groundwork for an upcoming rapid modernization; steamships and telegraph lines were making the world a smaller place; the United States was struggling with the issue of slavery and trying to avoid a civil war; and a relatively new invention was becoming an indispensable tool for artists, documentarians, and journalists: the camera. By 1857, dozens of photographers were traveling the world, capturing scenes they either hoped to sell, or were commissioned to photograph. On this day, the 160th anniversary of the founding of our illustrious magazine, The Atlantic, I invite you to pause for a few minutes and let yourself be transported back to the year 1857 with this photo tour. ( A note: Many dates are approximate; precise sourcing is difficult to find from that era.)

The inauguration of President James Buchanan, at the east front of the United States Capitol Building, on March 4, 1857. This was the first photograph of a presidential inauguration at the Capitol, which was still under construction in 1857. The stone yard in the foreground was covered with boards to provide a platform for the crowd. Buchanan served a single term, as the 15th president of the United States.#

Images of five of the original eight founders of The Atlantic, most of them made close to the year of its founding, 1857. From left: Ralph Waldo Emerson (ca. 1856); James Russell Lowell (1855); Francis H. Underwood (undated); Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (ca. 1860); and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (ca 1860). Lowell served as the magazine's first editor and Underwood was its first associate editor. The other men were writers who, along with the publisher, Moses Dresser Phillips and the other founding writers John Lothrop Motley and James Elliot Cabot, brainstormed the concept of the magazine in the Parker House Hotel in Boston, then launched The Atlantic Monthly in November of 1857. We've been publishing ever since.#

The Parker House Hotel, possibly in the early 1860s, much as it appeared when The Atlantic's founders held a dinner party on May 5, 1857, to first discuss the creation of a new magazine about politics, literature, and the arts. Note the many horse carriages along School Street, including one carrying wooden barrels parked in front of the sign-painting shop at lower left. The Parker House is still in operation, now called the Omni Parker House. A similar view to the above image can be seen in a recent Google Street View image.#

A view of the U.S. Capitol Building dome under construction in 1857, looking south from the roof of the Senate wing, showing the first row of columns near completion and the cast-irons pillars up. Also on the roof is the steam engine to power the hoist. The original dome of the Capitol Building was a smaller copper-clad structure that was replaced by this larger cast-iron dome after the building was greatly expanded in the 1850s.#

View of the River Seine, in Paris, from the Square du Vert-Galant, a park at the tip of the Ile de la Cité, in 1857. An equestrian statue of Henry IV can just be seen at lower right. The large building to the right is the Louvre.#

Napoleon III, emperor of France, photographed in 1857. Born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, the nephew and heir to Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon III served as president of France from 1848 to 1852 and as emperor from 1852 to 1870. He was captured during a battle in the Franco–Prussian War in 1870, and sent into exile in England, where he stayed until his death three years later.#

The Chattar Manzil palace wall in Lucknow, India, which was destroyed by mutineers during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (also known as the Sepoy Mutiny). In the foreground is the king's boat in the shape of a fish.#

Members of the Nusseree Battalion. A photograph of a group of Gurkha soldiers with their British officer, taken by Felice Beato during the Indian Mutiny, or Great Sepoy Rebellion. The first Gurkha regiments were incorporated into the British army in about 1816. The Nusseree Battalion later became the 1st Gurkha rifles unit.#

Engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (front row, center-right) and others observe the Great Eastern launch attempt in Blackwall, London, in November of 1857. The SS Great Eastern was a massive steamship, the largest ship ever built when it launched.#

Queen Victoria's visit to the Manchester Exhibition of Art Treasures of the United Kingdom in Manchester, England, in June of 1857. Queen Victoria is seated at center. The exhibition was an enormous affair, open for five months, and displayed more than 16,000 works of art to a total audience of more than 1.3 million visitors.#

Former President Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, posing in photographer Mathew Brady's New York portrait studio. Van Buren left office in 1841, and though he had fallen a bit out of political favor, he was still active doing work to support antislavery Democrats. At the time this portrait was taken, between 1855 and 1858, he was about 75 years old.#

Original title: Morlaix - Le quai de Tréguier," from a series called "Voyage en Bretagne, 1857." Morlaix is a small commune in Brittany, in the northwest of France. This scene would look very different in only a few years, as a massive rail bridge 62 meters tall would cut right across the center of the town, as the Viaduc de Morlaix was completed in 1863. See this same scene as it appears today on Google Street View. The three women in the foreground are walking along the Rivière de Morlaix.#

The earliest surviving photograph taken in Japan—a daguerreotype taken of the photographer's feudal lord, Shimazu Nariakira, dressed formally, on September 17, 1857. Photographer Ichiki Shirō had possession of the first daguerreotype camera brought into Japan, and worked for years to master it. This daguerreotype had been lost for many years, only to be rediscovered in a warehouse in 1975, and later declared an "Important Cultural Property" by the Japanese government.#